Electronic industry faces an increasing pressure towards miniaturization and cost savings. Especially in the consumer electronics sector, manufacturers strive for being able to manufacture products for their clients as small, flat, and compact as possible.
In the microelectronics domain, an enormous miniaturization, along with an automation of the manufacturing process could be achieved by integration of components in microchips. In the power electronics domain, construction volume and weight of circuits could be successfully reduced in the past, due to the development of switching mode power supplies (SMPS). In particular, the transfer of power using resonant converter topologies lead to very efficient and small solution. Yet, it would be desirable to integrate discrete components of the circuit, in particular for very thin and flat applications, such as plasma displays or LCD displays, further increasing the degree of miniaturization and automation.
However, integration is more difficult to achieve for circuits in power electronics applications. In particular, the differences of types of components are a reason for using discrete components to date. In addition, size reduction of these components is limited, because often a certain volume is required for storing a certain amount of energy, or to keep electrical losses reasonable.
Control systems for regulating output voltage and output current also contribute to the power converter's complexity and limit its possibilities for integration.
Power converters that are to be connected to a mains supply net (e.g. 230V AC/50 Hz in Europe, or 110 V AC/60 Hz in the United States), must comply with regulations of the operator of the mains supply net regarding power factor and mains harmonics.